...Pursuing the American Dream The Great Gatsby, written by Scott F. Fitzgerald in 1925, follows the life of the various characters that lived in West Egg, a fictional town on Long Island. It is narrated by Nicholas “Nick” Caraway, a Yale graduate and one of the main characters. By the way the book is written, one can deduce that Nick lived through all the events, or wrote what others told him about the events he was not present in, and wrote the book by end of it all. Its main theme is the pursuit of the American Dream, and what characters have to do to reach it, and how it can all crumble down. Basically, in this essay I will show the different ‘American dreams’ that are strongly projected in this novel. The first dream, the one with the strongest portrayal, was the desire of escalating in the social status ladder. There were characters with a high social status for their family’s name, like Tom Buchanan who inherited his family fortune. He was described as the kind of person that thinks money allows him to treat people as the lowest scum; even though his mannerism and tastes were exquisite, his attitude towards those who were not on the same status as him was detestable. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” (Page 188, The Great Gastby) Tom counts as an example of the...
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